MAGAZINES by Naomi Hodkinson (summary) part 2

Total Film

Future Publishing, £3.80 monthly. ABCs: 85,616

(ABCs – the Audit Bureau of Circulations audits the average circulation figures per issue of each magazine title over a siz-month period.)

future Publishing was started on a kitchen table in Bath in 2985 and now publishes over 150 magazines worldwide.

Its biggest are Total Film, Digital Camera, Classic Rock, etc.

Future also holds the official licence for magazines from Microsoft, Sony, Disney and Nintendo to publish titles like Official Nintendo Magazine. These associations with new technology companies can be linked to ideas about target audience and synergy.

The title has an extremely consistent format and layout. We will have noticed:

· On the cover – features which are indicated in the cover lines.

· Plus – the section on features which didn’t make the cover.

· Buzz – film news and gossip.

· Lounge – home entertainment news and features.

· Every edition starts with a planner of the month’s movie guide and a forum of readers’s letters, and rounds off with quizzes and a film-related competition.

On the Future Publishing website, Total Film is described as “vibrant, funny and accessible, mixing A-list glitz with indie attitude, instant hits with timeless classics”. The advertisements Total Film carries appear to support the idea that the magazine is targeting a predominantly young, educated, male audience.

The mode of address in Total Film is playful, masculine and youthful.

The magazine manages to avoid being either too specialized or too ‘laddish’ in its mode of address by using a knowing, assertive yet informal tone.

Total Film clearly positions its audience as young, knowledgeable film lovers with a sense of humor.

The stereotypical representations of gender it Total Film reflect the gender bias in the mainstream Hollywood film industry.

It claims that the average demographic is 75% male and is 26 years of age.

Stars are manufactured by the industry: they are commodities. Star images are constructed and mediated identities, defined by their historical context and their culture.

(Demographics – this approach to understanding the character of an audience makes generalizations about social groups).

Grazia

EMAP(Bauer), £1.90 weekly, ABCs: 227,083

Grazia was originally launched in Italy in 1938. Grazia now features glossy advertisements D&G, GUCCI, LOUIS VUITTON, EMPORIO ARMANI etc.

Grazia was arguably groundbreaking because it created a new ‘news and shoes’ generic mix.

One of its taglines is ‘a lot can happen in a week!’. It cleverly creates a hybrid mix of popular genres.

Observer Woman suggests that Grazia is ‘tapping the psyche of British women’.

Grazia offers its readers narrative pleasures by constructing narratives about A-list celebrities. Narrative is constructed within the features. Narrative can also be identified in the familiar format and structure of the magazine, with its consistent design style and regular features. Season changes are also indicated and reflected in the fashions.

Grazia is more accessible to the average young woman who is interested in fashion that other fashion magazines because, in spite of its upscale brand image, it features clothes from high street staples Peacock and Primark as well as designer brands. The house style is gossipy, but includes some hard news features and a glossy, ‘classy’ mode of address which may suggest that Grazia has a higher percentage of ABC1 readers.

Stars are culturally significant because they represent shared cultural values and attitudes.

2000 AD

£1.90 weekly, ABCs 20, 000 approx.

2000 AD emerged in the late-1970s, the era of punk sensibilities, when traditional children’s comics like Wizard and Hutspur were losing readers. It was originally published by IPC/Fleetway, then Egmont, but is now owned and published by Rebellion.

The genre of 2000 AD is difficult to define because it has elements of a range of genres, including war, science fiction and action/adverture.

2000 AD features five different comic strips a week. While each story is self-contained to an extend, the strips are serialized within each ‘prog’ (issue) and often end with cliff-hangers.

Characters depicted are generally aggressive, macho, tongue-in-cheek, male and white. Settings are generally dark, post-apocalyptic, dystopian and futuristic, which links to the partly science fiction genre. We could arguably criticize 2000 AD for violent content and the way it represents woman. The absence of female characters in some editions could itself be considered a negative representation. The comic’s ideology is hegemonic, although is positions the audience in contradictory ways.

It could be argued that 2000 AD foreshadows trends with parody and political satire. Satirical tone may appeal to fans because it assumes that they have their own political opinions. Given the fluid and shifting nature of the preferred readings, 2000 AD challenges its readers and is not just for children.

The fictional editor of 2000 AD is Tharg the Mighty. This idiosyncratic mode of address is part of the comic’s appeal: understanding the language is one of the pleasures offered by the text and may encourage audience identification.

While 2000 AD’s peculiar British style and humor may exclude some international audiences, it is popular in the US, Australia and New Zealand – generally anywhere that English speakers can be found.

Today 2000 AD is less widely distributed than many other comics although it can be found in larger branches of supermarkets and WH Smiths. Back issues can be ordered online and they remain on sale at collector’s and fan’s specialist shops, instead of being taken off sale and returned to the distributor like most periodical magazines. 2000 AD will stay on sale even if it is an older issue because it is a collector’s item. 2000 AD’s cult status and relatively small circulation mean that traditional marketing methods are not necessarily the most efficient.

Conclusion

Since magazines became popular more than a hundred years ago they have been scapegoated as inferior elements of popular culture.

The content of comics like 2000 AD may have a detrimental effect on audiences.

The audiences are able to negotiate their own understandings and decipher their own meanings from media texts.